Formulations and heuristics for scheduling in a buffer-constrained flowshop and flowline-based manufacturing cell with different buffer-space requirements for jobs: Part 1

This paper is the first of two dealing with the problem of scheduling in a permutation flowshop and a flowline-based manufacturing cell. The authors consider the presence of different buffer-space requirements (or different in-process inventory levels) for jobs and constraints on buffer capacity between machines. They first identify that the existing formulation for scheduling in the buffer-constrained flowshop-which assumes the same buffer-space requirements for all jobs-is restrictive. Hence, the authors propose the generalized formulation of recursive equations for time-tabling of jobs in the buffer-constrained flowshop. The formulation also takes into account different buffer-space requirements for jobs. The authors extend the formulation to address the situation where transport times are separated from process times. Subsequently, they propose the formulation for time-tabling of jobs in the buffer-constrained manufacturing cell.